Ghost Dog
by Maerlyn of Miria
Summary: A young couple move into the old Camber place, but the old monster, Cujo is far from gone! The dog is loose again, and he's very angry! Soon he will appear again, and violent death will follow. Who will survive? Rated M for later chapters.


Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine. He killed a waitress named Alma Frechette in 1970; a woman named Pauline Toothaker and a junior high school student named Cheryl Moody in 1972; a pretty girl named Carol Dunbarger in 1974; a teacher named Etta Ringgold in the fall of 1975; finally, a grade-schooler named Mary Kate Hendrasen in the early winter of that same year.

He was not werewolf, vampire, ghoul, or unnameable creature from the enchanted forest or the snowy wastes; he was only a cop named Frank Dodd with mental and sexual problems caused by his Mother, who had sexually abused him and who had, without knowing it, given him a mission to eliminate the "nasty fuckers" from the world. A good man named John Smith discovered his name by a kind of magic that allowed him to pick up impressions from whatever he touched, but before Frank Dodd could be captured ... perhaps it was just as well ... he killed himself in the bathroom of his Mother's house.

There was some shock, of course, but mostly there was rejoicing in that small town, rejoicing because the monster which had haunted so many dreams was dead, dead at last. A town's nightmares were buried in Frank Dodd's grave.

Yet even in this enlightened age, when so many parents are aware of the psychological damage they could do to their children, surely there was one parent in Castle Rock, or perhaps one Grandmother, who quieted the kids by telling them that Frank Dodd would get them if they didn't watch out, if they weren't good. And surely a hush fell as children looked toward their dark windows and thought of Frank Dodd in his shiny black vinyl raincoat, Frank dodd who had choked ... and choked ... and choked.

"He's out there," I can hear the Grandmother whispering as the wind whistles down the chimney pipe and snuffles around the old pot lid crammed in the stove hole, "he's out there, and if you're not good, it may be his face you see looking in your bedroom window after everyone in the house is asleep except you; it may be his smiling face you see peeking at you from the closet in the middle of the night, the stop sign he held up to cross the little children in one hand, the razor he used to kill himself in the other ... so shbb, children ... shhhh ... shhhh."

But for most, the ending was the ending. There were nightmares to be sure, and children who lay wakeful to be sure, and the empty Dodd house (for his Mother had a stroke and died shortly afterward) quickly gained a reputation as a haunted house and was avoided; but these were passing phenomena, the perhaps unavoidable side effects of a chain of senseless murders.

But time passed. Five years of time.

The Monster was gone. The monster was dead. Frank Dodd moldered inside his coffin.

Except that the monster never dies. Werewolf, vampire, ghoul, unnameable creature from the wastes. The monster never dies.

It came to Castle Rock again in the summer of 1980. Once again, it was not werewolf, vampire, ghoul, or unnameable creature from the enchanted forest or the snowy wastes. This time, it was a 200 pound St. Bernard named Cujo, who had been bitten by a rabid bat. Circumstances contrived to hide his illness from his owners, and finally, he went on a rampage, killing four people, including his owner, Joe Camber, Garry Pervier, the old drunk who lived down the rode from him, Sheriff "Big George Bannerman," and a four year old boy named Tadd Trenton. The only survivor, Tadd Trenton's Mother Donna, managed to once again put an end to the monster, but the monster never dies. It only rests a while, regaining its strength, preparing for its next chance.

During the years following Cujo's rampage, the old Camber place was abandoned and like the old Dodd place gained a reputation as a haunted house. Many a child in Castle Rock lay awake at night, wondering if what he or she heard outside his or her window might be the restless spirit of Cujo, back for blood and meaner than ever, but during the day they knew that such things just didn't happen. After all, science had proven that the dead don't come back, or do they?

The monster returned again in the fall of 1990, this time through the camera of an eleven year old boy named Kevin Delevan. Once again it took the form of a dog, this time a black, no-breed dog walking slowly along an old picket fence. As more and more pictures were taken with the camera, the dog appeared to come closer and closer to the photographer.

Castle Rock's sharpest trader, Pop Merril, stole the camera, intending to cash in on the "super natural" power it was exhibiting, but no matter how often he tried, he couldn't sell it, although he had an entire list of people he knew as "his Mad Hatters," who he believed, at least until he came into possession of Kevin's Sun 660 camera, would buy anything that even remotely smacked of the super natural. On the last day of Pop's life, he decided, a little late in the game, to destroy the camera, but it took control of him and used him to free the monster within.

Kevin Delevan (warned in dreams of a creepy little two dimensional town called Poleroidsville,) "Pop's dog broke his leash and he's a mean un. He tore up three or four people at the Trenton farm in Camberville before he came here," was able to banish the monster, but it once again attempted to return, this time hidden inside Kevin Dellevan's new word processor, "The dog is loose again. It is not sleeping. It is not lazy. It's coming for you, Kevin. It's very hungry. And it's very angry!" but the machine was returned, and the Delevan family fled Castle Rock.

Once again, the monster had been bested, but nothing is forever. Late the next year, a woman, sent to the old Camber place by a man who wasn't really a man at all, saw what she thought was Cujo lurking in the abandoned barn Joe Camber had used as an automobile repair garage.

After Seventeen years of silence, during which some people, mainly the younger ones, forgot about Cujo's bloody killing rampage, the monster once again returned and this time, it wasn't just people from "Town" who encountered it.

As afternoon was turning to early evening, a perfectly preserved 1958 Plymouth Fury turned onto Town Rode Number Three on the outskirts of Castle Rock, Maine. It passed the open fields, the ruins of one or two houses, and finally turned into the Dooryard of what once had been a house of some notoriety in town, although the car's occupants knew nothing of this.

The car's engine was cut, the driver's side door opened, and the driver, a young man named Mark Rimer, emerged. He walked to the passenger side, opened the door, reached in, and helped his girlfriend, Alison Hartley, out.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Alison asked, looking around at the some what over grown yard and the rather large barn at the head of the Dooryard.

"Yep," Mark replied, "Seven Oaks Farm. At least I think this is it. It's the only place that even looks like it could have been a farm at one time."

"I still can't believe we got it so cheep," Alison said.

"Neither can I," Mark answered, "but in our situation, you've got to take what you can get. After all, we couldn't stay in Boston. You know, your shithead Dad?"

"Don't remind me," Alison said.

Mark and Alison walked to the porch; Mark produced a key, unlocked the front door, and held it for Alison.

"Lady's first," he said with a smile.

"You'd better be careful," Alison joked, "some idiot from a radical feminist organization might sue you for being too much of a gentleman."

"They wouldn't dare," Mark mock-growled, "I'd drive them crazy by holding every door in town open for them. Then where would they be?"

After they had made a cursory examination of the living room or what ever they called it in Maine, they returned to the car and brought in their supply of lawn furniture, wondering as they did where the movers were.

After a dinner of fast food sandwiches, Mark returned to the car and brought in a large air mattress, hoping as he did that the power company had turned on the electricity. As it turned out, they had, and the air mattress was inflated in short order. As Mark unplugged the air mattress's pump, he began wondering why he had chosen an air mattress. Alison had had a cat when he had first met her and that situation hadn't changed. He could only hope that the cat in question didn't take it into her head to start clawing at the air mattress during the night, reducing it to unusable junk, but as it turned out, the cat had decided that she wanted to sleep under the kitchen table for the night, leaving the air mattress completely alone.

Mark awoke a few hours later to find that Alison was gone. He rose from the air mattress and went into the kitchen, where he found her seated at the table.

"What is it?" he asked quietly.

"My damn head's hurting again," Alison replied.

"Oh, shit," Mark said softly, "I sort of expected it, though. After all, how likely is it that you could avoid a headache when you just spent most of a day watching the sun glaring off some car's back deck?"

"Just once," Alison said, almost crying, "I wish the headaches would go and bother someone else."

"If they ever decided to," Mark said, "I could name at least two people they could target."

"Two?" Alison inquired.

"Yeah," answered Mark, "one of them would only happen to be your no good, drunken, abusive Dad."

"And who's the other?" Alison asked.

"Well," Mark admitted, "I guess there's only one, but there would be two if the other one wasn't currently a permanent resident of the Graveyard Apartments."."

Nearly a year before Mark had met her, Alison had been raped by the man she was then dating. For a time, while they were still living in Boston, they had been awakened at odd hours of the night by the idiot calling them and making crude remarks, that was until Mark informed him that his place of residence was known and that he would receive the worst ass kicking of his life if he called so much as one more time. Unfortunately Mark's warning went unheeded and the calls had continued, at least until Mark made good on his promise. He never got to put the guy in the hospital, though. When he arrived at the dump the raping sun of a bitch called home, he found the police there thanks to a call from one of the neighbors and the resident asshole in hand cuffs.

Mark only found out later that the idiot in question had been threatening his neighbors with arson and one of them had finally had enough of his shit and decided to get him off the streets for a while. Said while didn't last that long, however, for the threatening, raping, harassing fuck got himself beaten to death in the prison shower less than a week after he first found himself on the inside of the "Stone Hotel."

Mark, however, didn't mention the offending party by name, so as not to up set Alison. The way he looked at it, she was already in enough physical pain. She didn't need to be reminded of that part of her life on top of that. So let her think it was his crazy Mother he was talking about.

Mark had been born in a small town in Pennsylvania to John and Amanda Rimer, not that his Father had stayed around that long after conceiving him. He, John Rimer had taken off before he had even discovered that Amanda was pregnant, which was unfortunate for Mark, for Amanda Rimer was as insane as they come, although her insanity took the form of supposed worship of God and most of what God told her to do involved abusing Mark in every way possible.

Shortly after his fifteenth birthday, rather than kill her and finish up in prison, Mark ran away from home, finishing up in a small Ohio town where he got a job at a local gas station as a car washer.

It was during those first months without his Mother that he discovered that he had a knack for mechanical things in general and anything that moved on wheels and had an engine in particular. He began experimenting with the old junkers in the lot across from the gas station during his off time and soon got very good at repairing automobiles, even some that others said would never run again.

In fact, that was how he had come by the first car he actually owned. It wasn't much to look at. It had started life as an elderly Dodge Charger, vintage 1975, but by the time Mark was through with it it was more of a Dodge Mutt than anything else. Any part he could get to fit onto or into it (no matter what make or model of car it had originally come from) was there. Sure, it wasn't much to look at, but the thing purred like a kitten by the time Mark had finished making it what it became.

It was shortly after he began work on his car that the Ohio state police showed up at his door thanks to a report given them by some well meaning but unnecessarily inquisitive member of the local community that an under age kit was working at the local filling station. At first, Mark thought he was screwed and that he would be sent back to his Mother, but as it turned out, the Ohio state police had made contact with the police in Mark's old home town and had discovered that Amanda Rimer was not only as mad as a hatter, but abusive as well. Mark was told that someone from the department would be around once a week to check on him until he turned eighteen, but that was all.

Shortly after his seventeenth birthday, however, his Mother located him. He had been on his way to work, driving what he called "The Mongrel," when he spotted her standing in the gas station's parking lot. Rather than pulling into the lot and confronting her right there, as she was more than likely to spray him with gas from one of the self service pumps and set him on fire as punishment for his supposed sins in the eyes of God, he drove past, stopped at the end of the block, wrote a hurried note to his employer, sealed it in an envelope, located a drop box, stopped at a phone booth, informed the local police as to why he was leaving, and said good-bye to Ohio forever.

During the next two years, he remained on the run, usually staying just one step ahead of his Mother, until she was run down by a train one day in California. She had been chasing him in a rented car, but he had made it across the tracks ahead of her. She, not only being crazy, but somewhat stupid as well, either believed that God would protect her from the big bad chew chew train or apparently forgot or never was clued into the fact that those silly little bells and those funny little red lights near rail rode tracks went ding ding ding and flash flash flash for a reason, and it wasn't just to hear and see themselves do it, that those funny metal thingies everyone with a brain called cross bars didn't just come down to prevent cars from crossing the tracks because they didn't have anything better to do sometimes or simply wanted to make some poor sad sack late for work out of some sadistic need to prove that they were in control, that the drivers of all the other cars didn't stop when the lights went flash, the bells went ding, and the cross bars came down because they had suddenly fallen madly in love with their break petals, and that those big metal things that ran on the tracks weren't just cutesy boxy things that went clickity- clack and toot toot just so kids could sing songs about them, and that they did not under any circumstances say "I think I can, I think I can.". As a matter of fact, what they usually said was more along the lines of, "Hey asshole! What the fuck do you think you're doing on the tracks while I'm coming through? Get the fuck out of my way or I'll pulverize your stupid ass! As a matter of fact I think I'll just save us all some time and do just that! You're too fucking stupid to live, so get ready to go splat! I mean! Jesus fucking Christ! If it's not cows wandering onto the tracks in all those stupid kid's train stories, it's stupid, idiotic, Jesus shouting no-brains fartheads like you!"

After that, Mark began retracing his path across the country, but before he had gone very far on his return journey, he had lucked into the car which would become his prized possession. He had first seen it as he was driving past a house on the outskirts of a small California town. The 58 Fury had been in need of a bit of work, but not really that much. Its owner, Mark thought, must have really loved it.

As it turned out, the owner of the car had died a few days before and a couple members of his family were disposing of the property. None of them wanted the car, as they all had cars of their own. Mark discovered this when he stopped to get a better look at the car he had thought he would never own and drove away fifteen minutes later behind its wheel, making one stop to trade the Dodge for two hundred dollars.

During the rest of his return journey he stopped in several towns throughout the country and when he wasn't working on other people's cars he was working on his own. A year after he had first seen it the Fury looked like brand new and ran like a dream.

He eventually finished up in Boston, working at an automobile repair garage which had the misfortune to be run by a guy with a serious gambling problem. As a matter of fact, it was that particular problem that eventually forced the closure of the garage and the end of Mark's employment there, but before that happened he was to meet the girl he would be madly in love with less than six months after their first meeting.

He had been driving home after a trip to the grocery store, the trunk of the fury loaded with everything from milk, to meat, to bred and everything in between, including two dozen eggs which unfortunately wouldn't survive long enough to make it into a refrigerator. On the way he passed one of the many bars in the city and in the parking lot he saw a man holding a young woman by her hair and preparing to hit her, most likely not for the first time.

Upon seeing this Mark pulled over to the curb, cut the engine and got out quietly. He found that it was remarkably easy to sneak up on the extremely loud and extremely disreputable individual. He was, after all, doing a great deal of yelling, not all of which could be understood by anyone but a long time bar tender, and Mark's progress was aided by the fact that there was some noise coming from some other quarters as well.

He made it to within four feet of the man, who would turn out to be the young woman's Father, reared back his right fist and landed a hard punch to the back of the man's neck. This forced the man to release his hold on the crying woman and turn toward Mark.

"You lookin for trouble, son?" the man said in slurred tones.

"Nope," Mark answered calmly, "I think I found him and he looks like eighty pounds of shit in a five pound bag. As a matter of fact, he, or should I say, you, don't look as much like trouble as you do the great King Shithead the Seventh."

At this, the man tried to get in his own swing, but mark hadn't had anything to drink apart from a can of Pepsi and was able to duck out of the way, reaching out and pulling the woman with him. The man's fist impacted with the window of someone's pickup truck, making a sound like splintering bones. King Shithead then began jumping up and down in the parking lot, holding his bleeding hand and howling like a wolf caught in a steel trap.

"Come on!" Mark nearly shouted to be heard over the combined noise of King Shithead, two lawnmowers, a radio blasting rap music at top gain, and several people on the other side of the parking lot who were cheering as if this was the best sporting event that had come to Boston since the first settlers came over on the May Flower and guided her gently but quickly toward the Fury.

King Shithead, meanwhile, picked that moment to forget about his hand, which would turn out to be sporting three broken knuckles thanks to him punching a pickup's passenger window, and decided to give chase. He wobble stagger stumble bumbled his way across the lot, coming into involuntary contact with three more vehicles on the way, and reached for the woman. Before he could grab her, however, Mark got her into the car, closed her door, and ran around to the other side, got in, and keyed the engine.

At the same time, King Shithead began drumming on the Fury's hood with his uninjured fist.

"Lemme in, you fucker!" He slurred, "das my kid you god in there!"

For a moment, mark wondered what the fuck the drunken idiot was talking about. He had, after all, never heard of anyone, either male or female, who had the name Das, and then he got it. What he was actually trying to say was, "that's my kit you've got in there."

"Frankly, asshole," Mark countered, "I don't give a rat's ass. You don't go around treating your daughter like that. Now get out of here before I run over your sorry ass!"

"Fuck off and die!" King Shithead screamed back, "die you motherfucker! Die you motherfucker! Die! Die! Die!"

"Oh well," Mark thought, "I did warn him," and he gunned the Fury's engine and put it in drive.

At first, King Shithead didn't have the faintest idea what was going on, or at least that's the way it appeared to Mark. For a moment he simply stood there as the car began to move forward. Then he got the clue and took off across the parking lot, still not doing very well in the navigation department. He wove first to one side, striking a garbage can and upsetting it onto himself, and then the other, running face first into the side of the same pickup he'd punched the window of earlier. He fell to the ground, unconscious, covered in swill from the overturned trash can, and looked as if he intended to set up house right there.

At this development, Mark began to laugh.

"did you see him?" he asked the woman as he pulled out into traffic (a little to enthusiastically thanks to his laughter) causing the two-dozen eggs in the trunk to go flying out of the grocery bag in which they had been placed and to smash all through the inside of the trunk, "d-d-d-did you s-s-s-see?"

"It's your friendly neighborhood garbage man," Alison said and began to laugh herself.

This caused Mark to laugh even harder, for a picture had sneaked into his head of King Shithead in a costume and mask, weaving his way through the darkened streets of some comic book city or other and doing his best to find that all important can of beer or bottle of cheap whiskey, whilst sporting a tell-tale odor of trash which he used to advertise his presence and warn all sober people to stay out of his way. Tears squirted from the corners of his eyes and he pulled the Fury over to the curb and howled, pounding his fists against his legs.

After he had calmed down a little, he asked her where she lived and if the idiot he had just gotten the best of was the one she lived with. As it turned out, she didn't live with King Shithead, but unfortunately he knew where she lived, and had, thanks to that, become a regular problem for her.

From that night on, Mark and Alison had been inseparable. A couple days after their first meeting, he asked her if she wanted to move in with him, but just as room mates. She agreed, but it wasn't that long before they were together as a couple.

Over the next year, she told him everything, including the fact that her Father regularly used her to obtain money for him, although she didn't say how, and Mark didn't press the issue. During that year, they'd spent a bit of time in New York state, and had encountered a young woman whose excuse for a Step Father had decided to rape her and her younger sister. They had done what they could for her, including involving themselves in the legal proceedings that followed the man's original deeds, and had, eventually, become involved in something else entirely, something most people wouldn't have believed possible.

After he and Alison had returned to New England, Mark had resumed his job until the news had come about the closure of the garage in which he had been working, and at the same time, King Shithead, as Mark would always call Carl Hartley, had begun causing trouble. He had begun by discovering where they lived and coming around at various times and banging on the door and yelling fit to wake the dead, at least until Mark chased him off with a wrench. He then began making harassing phone calls in the middle of the night, at least until Mark sought him out in one of his favorite bars and informed him that if there was so much as one more call from him, he would finish up in jail.

"And there's no beer in there," he finished, "so if you want to keep wetting your goddamn whistle and getting plastered out of your mind, you'll stop calling us. Alison does not and I repeat does not want to hear from you."

The trouble grew worse shortly before the two of them had decided that Boston had no future for them. They had awakened one night to the smell of smoke and discovered that King Shithead had attempted to burn them alive.

As a result, Mark began making calls to various places in New England, attempting to find him and Alison a new place to live, and as it turned out, he found one almost right away. Final arrangements for the move had been made the previous week, and the previous day, Mark turned in the keys to the house and had begun the actual move which had ended with Alison being awakened in the middle of the night, in a strange house, in a strange town, with one of her deluxe skull-pounders. Said skull pounders seemed to be completely unaffected by any type of pain killer, unless they wanted to be, and more often than not, they decided they didn't, but this wasn't to be one of those times. After taking a couple of pills from a bottle she had marked "Emergency Supplies," the pain appeared to lessen.

"I wonder if she's hooked on that shit yet," Mark thought, "If she is, though, addiction's just another side effect." He wondered, not for the first time, what the hell King Shithead had done to her when she was younger, but now, as at all the other times, he didn't ask. When she was ready, she would tell him.

"Hun," Alison said, breaking the silence, "what's the temperature outside. It seems a little hot."

Mark got up from the table, went into what was presumably the living room, opened one of the suitcases, got out a portable radio, came back to the kitchen, plugged it in, and began searching through the local stations, both on the A.M., and F.M. bands. On the A.M. band, he got nothing but the usual night time radio traffic jam of stations stepping all over each other like overeager fans at a Metallica concert. On the F.M. band, however, he found what appeared to be a local rock and roll station.

After The Eagles finished telling everyone currently awake in the Castle Rock area that there was "A New Kid In Town," a DJ, who sounded as if he were wishing he were anywhere but where he was, began, with a sort of sadistic joy, telling his listening audience that temperatures were currently in the mid 70s and were expected to climb into the low to mid 90s by mid afternoon. The relative humidity accompanying these hot temperatures was, according to Mr. DJ, supposed to be somewhere in the range of 80 to 90 percent. After that, as if to add to the torture he had begun inflicting on his listeners with the weather forecast, he decided, for some reason known only to tired cranky DJs, that the next song he would play contained no actual singing. Instead, the so-called artist began screaming into the microphone, accompanied by guitar riffs that sounded as if they had been composed by someone with a bad temper, worse taste, and no talent.

"I hope the movers get here early," Alison said, as Mark switched the radio off, "sounds like we're really going to need those air conditioners."

"So do I," Mark replied, "but I wish now that I'd bought a gun of some sort."

"Why?" Alison asked with some surprise.

"So I can seek out the, um, artist who did that song I shut off and eliminate him from the human race," answered Mark.

"Are you sure he or she's even human," Alison asked, "whoever they were, they sounded more like some sort of screaming monster."

"In that case," Mark said with a smile, "I guess bullets wouldn't have any effect."

"Probably not," Alison agreed.

"Now there's an original horror movie idea," Mark said as he put an arm around Alison's shoulders, "Night of the Screaming shrieking nonartist."

As Mark was talking to Alison inside the house, something moved outside. If anyone had been on the old Camber property at the time, they would have seen only a pair of eyes that glowed with murderous intent. From somewhere in the night, a low growl shook the very air.

Mark was cleaning up the breakfast dishes, said job consisted of him throwing two paper plates into a garbage bag, and Alison was seated at the portable picnic table they were using as a temporary all-purpose table until the movers arrived, when two large trucks pulled into the dooryard.

"Did we have enough furniture to need two trucks?" Alison asked.

"Not that I know of," answered Mark, "I think I might need to ask someone what the second truck is doing here."

As it turned out, he didn't have to. While the first truck pulled up as close to the house as it could, the second pulled into the old barn. Mark watched as the driver of the second truck and his passenger got out and began to unload piece after piece of automobile repair equipment.

"Woe," he said, opening the door, "what's all that doing here?"

"Your old boss in Boston wanted you to have this stuff, Mr. Rimer," replied the second truck's driver, "he said that you were the best person to give it to. He also said he was sorry for fucking up your job and that he hopes this will make up for it."

The next two or so hours were spent arranging the furniture in the various rooms of the house, and the equipment in the barn.

"I wonder if I should put up a sign," Mark thought, "I mean I could probably start my own automobile repair business with all this stuff."

After the movers were gone, Alison walked over to Mark.

"Did you hear what that one guy was telling me?" she asked.

"Not really," Mark admitted, "I was too busy trying to make sure that guy with the whiskey breath didn't scratch up anything by hitting it with anything else."

"He said that this place has a history," said Alison, "he said that some people were killed here."

"They probably say that about every old house in town," Mark replied, "after all, what would a small town be without at least one haunted house to its credit?"

"I'm sure that's all it is," Alison said, "but he seemed serious."

"So did all the people who told the old campfire story about the escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand who just happened to leave his hook in the door handle of the couple's car," Mark said.

"I guess you're right," replied Alison.

"Or," continued Mark, "all those people who tell the story of the old woman whose dog always slept under the bed and licked her hand first thing in the morning."

"I never heard that one," Alison said interestedly.

"Well," Mark began, "according to the story, that state of affairs went on for years, until one night, when the woman was awakened by the sound of dripping water. She got up, turned off the bathroom faucet, and went back to bed. When she got up the next morning, she reached her hand under the bed and the dog licked it just like always, but when she got down stairs she found the dog hanging by its tongue from the light fixture."

"Then how did the dog lick her hand if it was dead?" asked Alison.

"There was a note tucked in under the dog's collar," Mark replied, "it said something like; your dog isn't the only one small enough to fit under your bed."

"Who was it then?" Alison inquired, "the incredible psycho dwarf or something?"

"I don't know," laughed Mark, "but what I'm saying is that there are stories like that everywhere."

"How about the one about the little girl whose parents went out for dinner on the night of a really bad thunder storm and got killed?" asked Alison.

"What's so strange about that one?" mark inquired.

"The girl's uncle had died the year before," answered Alison, "but that night she got a telephone call from him telling her to stay in the house. The next morning her brother arrived and told her about the deaths of their parents and how lucky she was to have staid in the house."

"Why was she lucky?" Mark asked.

"Because the whole neighborhood, apart from their house was destroyed in the storm," replied Alison, "she told him about the phone call and he told her about how the telephone lines were down and how one section of the downed wires was wrapped around her uncle's gravestone."

"Sounds like something you'd see on either the Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories," Mark said.

"Or," continued Alison, "how about the one where the boy spent the night in the graveyard on a dare and was found dead the next morning with a knife pinning him to the ground?"

"I think I even saw a made for TV version of that one," laughed Mark, "and I know one that's something like the little girl's story, but takes place on the open highways of America."

"Really?" Alison inquired.

"That's right," answered Mark, "in this one, a truck driver was carrying a full load of gasoline, about twenty tons worth. It was raining and there was an old guy hitchhiking by the side of the rode. The trucker picked him up and was told to be careful just before he came to the next truck stop. You see, there was a danger of rock slides because of all the rain. The Hitchhiker got out a couple miles later and the trucker drove on, taking it easy, and wouldn't you just know it, there was a rock slide right where the old guy, who called himself Sam Preston, said there might be."

"So, what happened?" asked Alison.

"The trucker got to the stop, probably by climbing over the rocks in the rode, and told the guy behind the counter that if it hadn't been for Sam Preston hitchhiking, he, the trucker, might have ended up looking like one of the ham burgers the cook was frying up. The counterman told the trucker that Sam Preston had been dead for ten years. He'd been killed in a rock slide, right where the trucker's rig was standing."

"You know," Alison said, "that does sound a bit like the one about the girl's uncle."

Mark went to the refrigerator, reached in, and attempted to find a can of Pepsi, but found nothing instead. Not only was there no Pepsi, but there was no food of any kind.

"Oh, boy," he said, "looks like we'll have to go into town for supplies."

Alison moved to the door, which Mark opened for her, and they went out of the house, after making sure that Alison's cat hadn't followed them out, got into the Fury, and soon were headed toward town. The drive was uneventful, at least until they got into town. At that point, people began looking at the car as if they had never seen one before.

They passed a shop called You Sew and Sew on their right and a restaurant called Nan's Luncheonette on their left. Further up on their right was a vacant lot and on their left they saw another restaurant, but this one was no luncheonette. It seemed to Mark to be one of those up-scale sit down restaurants one expected to see in cities like Boston.

"Culture comes to small town America," Alison observed.

After driving for another couple minutes, Mark located a grocery store and pulled the Fury into the parking lot.

Approximately an hour later, the "new couple in town" emerged from the store, loaded down with enough supplies to last at least a month.

"Where now?" Alison asked.

"Don't know," Mark replied, "I would say we ought to stop at one of the restaurants and get some take out, but considering how many cars there are in the lots of both restaurants I can see, our groceries will be gone over by the time we get out with the food. It might be a good idea for us to get the food stored and then worry about what to do next."

"Then there's that sign you were wondering about," reminded Alison.

"I didn't know I said anything out loud about a sign," Mark said with some surprise.

"You didn't have to, Dear," replied Alison with a smile, "I know the way your mind works by now. I know you were thinking of using the barn as a garage."

As Mark and Alison turned back toward their new home, a young woman watched their departure from the parking lot of the more up-scale restaurant. She wondered who they were, where they had come from, and where they were going. They appeared to be new in town and she wondered, just for a moment, if at least one of them might be one of hers, but after another moment's consideration she decided that neither one of them were. The man drove far too well and the woman looked too much at ease with her surroundings, but where were they going? From the direction they had turned in after leaving Hemphill's Market, they appeared to be driving toward Town Rode Number Three and as far as she knew only one person lived there and neither one of them were him.

She turned back toward the restaurant, as if waiting for someone, and attempted to ignore the feeling that something was about to happen. Something bad! But it was extremely difficult for her to ignore that feeling. The last time she had tried, the man who had become, not quite a second Father, but at least sort of like family to her, had died in his junk shop and a year later, when she had gotten that feeling again, a new store had opened in town and everyone had seemed to go crazy.

On that occasion a lot of people had died. Some had killed each other, others had killed themselves after people close to them had died and as if that hadn't been bad enough, a couple of madmen had tried to blow up the entire town.

There was also the matter of the house in the area of town known as The Bend that seemed to be building onto itself, until a couple of the people she thought of as "hers" had put an end to it by burning it to the ground.

It had been nearly sixteen years since she had gotten that "bad" feeling, but now it was back and stronger than ever.

"The old monster," she thought, "it waits. It bides its time, and then it comes back. It always comes back. God help us!

Several hours after Mark and Alison arrived home with the groceries and a sign reading "Mark Rimer's Automobile Repair" had been painted over the barn doors, they received their first customer. She pulled into the dooryard in an extremely beaten up Honda, got out, and walked up to Mark.

"My car tore ehp," she pronounced it "ehp".

"I see," Mark said, whilst at the same time attempting to figure out just what the woman was talking about. For a moment, he had gotten a picture in his head of the woman's car simply ripping up the side as if it had been constructed from paper.

"You gonna fix it?" the woman nearly yelled.

"Oh, I'll fix it," Mark answered, "as soon as I figure out what's wrong with it."

"It tore ehp," the woman repeated.

"What exactly is tore ehp and how does a car do it?" Mark asked.

"It tore ehp!" this time the woman was yelling and blowing beer fumes in Mark's face.

"Just let me under the hood and I'll figure out what's wrong with it and fix it," Mark said, attempting to remain calm. He felt like telling this loud, ugly, drunken bitch to go stuff it, but what would that do to his business?"

"Just fix it!" snapped the woman, "I don't care if you have to get under the hood or just stand and look at it. Just get it done!"

Mark opened the car's driver's side door, fumbled around for a couple of seconds, found the hood release, and pulled it. Nothing happened.

"Great," he thought, "I guess a car tearing ehp means you can't get the hood to open."

"What are you doin in there?" asked the car's owner, leaning in the passenger door and subjecting Mark to another whiff of stale alcohol fumes.

"I'm trying to open the hood," Mark replied, exhibiting an enormous amount of control, "could you go to the front of the car and pound it a couple times? Maybe then I'll be able to open it."

The woman, whose name Mark would find out later was Linda Kelly, walked to the front of the car, raised her hand and pounded on the hood. At the same time, Mark pulled the hood release lever again. This time the hood opened, nearly hitting Linda "Loud Mouth" Kelly in the jaw as it did.

"If only it had knocked her out," Mark thought as he straightened up, closed the driver's side door, and walked to the front of the car.

Rather than being knocked unconscious, Linda walked or rather staggered to the porch, sat down, and reached into her purse. At first Mark didn't know what to make of this, but then he saw her hand emerge holding a can of beer.

"Great," he thought, "not only did she pull in here with more than the legal limit in her system, but she's making sure she'll be totally snookered by the time she leaves. I can only hope she passes out behind the wheel before she can go anywhere. If she doesn't and if someone gets run down by her I'll be partially responsible for their permanent injuries or deaths. Why did my first customer have to be a raving drunk?"

Before Mark could even begin his examination of the car, another vehicle turned into the dooryard. This one was a red Jaguar and looked to be in perfect condition. The passenger door opened and a young woman got out, smoothing her dress as she did. The driver's side door opened a moment later and a man emerged, walked around the car, and took the woman's hand.

"Hopefully these two won't be loud obnoxious drunks," Mark thought as he watched the newcomers.

"Miss Kelly," the woman said, after she and the man with her had approached the porch, "I've been sent to tell you that you still owe the McKoslands money for the damage you did to their barn last week."

"I ain't got no money!" Linda shouted, reaching into her purse for another beer as she spoke.

"You've certainly got enough money for beer," responded the woman, who seemed to Mark to be some kind of collector.

"You mind your own business!" Linda shouted.

"This is my business," the woman replied calmly, "I'm just trying to save you from going to court."

"I ain't goin to court for you or nobody!" Linda shouted.

"I'm afraid you will be," the woman responded, "if you don't pay up."

"I don't have no money to pay ehp!" snapped Linda.

"Maybe her money tore ehp," Mark thought, "right along with her car and her brain."

"If you have money for beer," Alison said, joining the conversation, "then you've got money for other things too. What did you think? Did you think Mark would fix your car for free?"

"You shut ehp and keep out of this!" Linda screamed, doing her best to get in Alison's face as she did.

"Get out of my face," Alison said, laying a hand on Linda's shoulder and pushing her back. Said action caused Linda's already precarious hold on her balance to dessert her and she fell back onto the porch, striking her head and causing Alison to react in surprise, as the woman she had just pushed over-topped her by nearly a foot. As she fell, the can of beer she had been holding flew from her hand, struck the wall of the house, rolled across the porch, reached the edge, and landed in what had once been a flower bed, spraying beer from the side of the house to its final landing point.

"Thanks," Mark said, slamming the hood of the Honda," "I was just about ready to find the nearest heavy object and knock a divot in her head with it."

"I didn't mean to knock her out," admitted Alison.

"Well, I'm glad you did," Mark said, "I'd just about had enough of her mouth."

"You and me both," Alison replied.

"Now," Mark said, "all we need to do is clean that mess up."

"Which one?" asked Alison, "her or the beer?"

"Both," laughed Mark.

"Just bloody leave her there," said the man from the red Jag in a decidedly English accent.

"I don't want to do that," Mark replied, still laughing, "that would be porch pollution."

Before any introductions could be made, however, an old, beat to hell, shit brown pickup truck turned into the dooryard, rattling, clanking, and backfiring all at the same time.

"Wow," mused Mark, "first we have the crappy Honda and now the revenge of Dr. Junkenstein. Who drives around in a junker like that?"

The motor of the elderly pickup didn't so much shut off as give up. The driver's door opened with a screak that sounded as if a million rats were being boiled alive in a vat of extremely hot oil and a foot clad in a gray boot that looked about as old as the truck from which it emerged was the first visible sign of the truck's owner. The boot was followed by the rest of the driver, who, after shutting the truck's door, simply stood in the dooryard, staring off into the distance.

"Who is this now?" Alison asked to no one in particular.

"Hey," responded the pickup's driver in a droning voice, "it's Sonic the Hedgehog, man. He's a video game, man. It's cool to be a video game. You can run into stuff."

"Okay," Mark said in disbelief, "who is this guy?"

"Oh," said the Englishman from the Jag, "that's only Wes. He's harmless."

"Really?" Mark asked.

"Oh, yes," replied Mr. Englishman, "annoying, but harmless."

"I hope you're right," Mark said, "I don't need him suddenly attacking us or something."

"He won't," said the woman who had informed Linda Kelly that she owed some family money as she opened the aforementioned drunkard's purse, apparently checking as to whether or not she had been telling the truth about not being able to "pay ehp,."

"Are you sure you want to be doing that?" Mark asked, "she could press charges against you."

"I don't think she even knows what's going on right now," responded the woman, "your girlfriend, or wife, or whatever she is gave her a pretty good push."

"If she hadn't," Mark replied, "I would have, probably with a jack handle or a tire iron."

"It would have been no loss to society if you had," contributed Mr. Englishman, "but the law would have taken a very narrow view of your actions."

"Let some of them deal with her and then talk to me about it," answered Mark.

"They've had to," replied Mr. Englishman, "as a matter of fact; they're becoming rather tired of her particular brand of nonsense."

"What's her problem anyway?" Alison asked.

"I don't think the day would be long enough to go into the list of problems she has," replied Lady Collector.

"I thought not," contributed Mark.

"Hey," droned Wes, "you gonna fix my truck? I've godda get to the next level."

"What's he going on about, now?" Mark asked.

"The next level is probably the Mellow Tiger," Mr. Englishman replied.

"What on Earth is the Mellow Tiger?" Mark asked.

"The local bar," Mr. Englishman answered, "rather a silly name, don't you think?"

"I'm starting to think this whole town's a bit silly," replied Mark, "first we get the raging drunken loudmouth, then we get the droner stoner, then we get the Mellow Tiger. What's next? the Not So Mellow Bunny Rabbit? The Murderous fly? The Psychotic beetle? The Killer Lightning Bug? The Demented Cricket? The Rampaging Mosquito, maybe?"

"Don't worry," Lady Collector said, as she finished her inspection of Linda Kelly's purse, "you've met all the crazies in town who matter."

"That's good," Mark said with some relief, "I was starting to think Alison and I had fallen into one of those Monty Python sketches or something."

"It does sometimes seem that way," Mr. Englishman agreed.

"And thanks to those two," Mark said, "I've forgotten my manners. I'm Mark Rimer and this lovely lady beside me is my girlfriend, Alison Hartley."

"Pleasure," Lady Collector said, extending her hand, "I'm Marie Vannay-Andrus-Merril-Davis."

"How on Earth do you sign your checks with a name that long?" Mark asked with a smile, "and how did you come by that many last names?"

"That's an extremely long story," Marie replied, "and this is my husband, John."

"We're pleased to meet both of you," Mark and Alison said in perfectly unrehearsed unison, looked at each other, and began to laugh.

"We're s-s-sorry," Mark said, after he and Alison had regained control of their laughter, "that just happens sometimes."

"That's perfectly alright," Marie responded, "the two of you are extremely close. One would almost say you've got the touch."

"The what?" Mark inquired.

"An extremely powerful bond," John answered, "one that's almost telepathic."

"Well," Mark admitted, "there have been times one of us has known what the other is thinking."

"By the way," Alison asked Marie, "are you a collector of some kind?"

"Not full time," answered Marie, "most times I'm the one who settles various disputes."

"Are you the local law, then?" Mark asked.

"Not exactly," Marie answered, "and there are times, like now, that I'm glad I'm not. Having to deal with Linda Kelly, whilst at the same time attempting to stay within the letter of the law would have driven me mad long ago."

"What was this about her damaging someone's barn?" Alison inquired.

"She was driving whilst under the influence," john explained, "and hit the McKoslands' barn doing nearly 50 miles an hour. Needless to say, the side of the barn she hit was totally demolished."

"I guess that's how her car tore ehp," Mark said, "whatever the fuck that means."

"If you think that's bad," Marie said, "just wait till she starts talking about how someone yarded something off, yarded off with something, or started yardin on something."

"You're not serious, are you?" Mark asked in disbelief.

"I wish I weren't," replied Marie, "but unfortunately I am."

"How did someone like that live long enough to be as old as she is?" inquired Alison, "you'd think she'd have won a Darwin award before she was old enough to talk."

"What are these Darwin awards?" Marie inquired.

"Articles concerning themselves with people who did something remarkably stupid and died for their trouble," John explained, causing Mark and Alison to wonder for the first time where this woman had come from.

"I see," Marie responded.

Before the conversation could go on any further, something in John's pocket began to beep.

"Oh," he said, "bloody cell phone."

Before he could extract the cell phone from his pocket, however, it stopped ringing.

"What the hell?" he asked.

"It's probably the same idiot who called you yesterday wanting to know of they could speak to hinkley-eyed hinkel-popper," Marie replied.

"What in the name of hell?" Mark asked in surprise.

"We have this, um, person," John said, "who finds, on a regular basis, that he has nothing better to do than to call random people in the middle of the night and ask to speak to nonexistent people."

"I thought you said we'd heard about all the crazies who matter in this town," Alison said.

"He's not a regular," John said, "at least where it involves coming to people's houses and causing problems."

"I'm glad our cell numbers are going to be unlisted," Mark said.

"Speaking of cell phones," Marie said, "you might want to call a tow truck."

"Why?" inquired Mark.

"Linda was telling the truth when she said she didn't have any, oh, no money."

"Wonderful," groaned Mark, "our cell phones aren't turned on yet."

"You can use mine," John said, offering his cell phone to Mark.

The call made and a tow truck summoned, Mark returned the cell phone to John, walked to the porch, grabbed Linda Kelly under the arms, and carried her off the porch, into the side yard, and laid her down in a patch of weeds.

"That's as good a place as any for her," he said as he returned to the others.

"I only wish there was a way to get rid of her that didn't involve breaking some law or other," Alison said, "this probably isn't the last time we'll have to deal with her."

Probably not," Mark agreed, "but unfortunately tarring and feathering is out of the question and so is riding her out of town on a rail."

"Here comes the tow truck," John said.

"Wow," Wes droned, "tow trucks. I wonder how many points they're worth."

"If you don't want to find out how many life points they can take from you when they hit you," john said, "you'll get out of its way."

As Wes moved out of the dooryard, the tow truck pulled in and up to the Parked vehicles, but rather than hitching up to Linda Kelly's beat to shit Honda Accord, the men hitched Wes's pickup to the tow truck and began backing out onto Town Rode Number Three. Mark and Alison immediately gave chase. Mark had, whilst on the phone with the towing company, told them to get the "shit heap" out of his dooryard, but they'd taken the wrong one.

"No!" Mark shouted, attempting to compete with the tow truck's engine, "No, not that shit heap, the other one!"

After Mark and alison had run nearly a quarter of a mile after the truck, the driver noticed that something was wrong and stopped.

"What's the matter?" he asked, after rolling down the truck's window.

"You took the wrong shit heap," Mark explained, "I can probably fix that one. It's the other one, the Honda, you know, Linda Kelly's shit heap, I wanted you to take."

"She in trouble?" asked the driver.

"No," Mark replied, "she can't pay for repairs on her car and I don't want it taking up space that could be used for a vehicle I can fix and get some money for fixing."

The misunderstanding was soon cleared up and the Honda taken away. A few minutes after that, John's cell phone rang again and this time it wasn't a hang up call. He and Marie said their farewells and drove off to pick up their daughter from school, leaving Mark and Alison alone again, except for Wes, who seemed determined to stand in their side yard and stare at the neighboring fields all night.

"What do you think we ought to do with him?" Alison asked.

"Probably nothing," Mark answered, "give him time and he'll probably go back home."


End file.
